The Big One of 1968

At the end of October I wrote that it’s not too late to stay frosty in response to a Pat Buchanan article stating that 2018 is not as violent as 1968:

According to Bryan Burrough, author of “Days of Rage, America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence,” “During an 18-month period in 1971 and 1972, the FBI reported more than 2,500 bombings on U.S. soil, nearly 5 a day.”

No, 2018 is not 1968, at least not yet.

But Victor Davis Hanson has an admonishment:[1]

But maybe the ’60s, not the silent majority, won out after all. The world a half-century later looks a lot more like 1968 and what followed than what preceded it.

Most of the political and cultural agenda from that turbulent period — both the advances and the regressions — has long been institutionalized. The military draft, for good or bad, has remained defunct. There is greater transparency in politics, fewer smoke-filled rooms. Disabled children, once ostracized and/or dismissively labeled “retarded,” are now far better integrated into society and treated more ethically as special-needs kids. The rights of women, minorities and the LGBT community are now widely accepted.

Yet lifestyles have been radically altered — and often not for the good. Before the late ’60s, most Americans married before having children; afterward, not so much. One-parent households are now far more common.

Other legacies of the ’60s include couples marrying later and having fewer children. A half-century later, these social inheritances often mean prolonged adolescence, older parents, delayed or nonexistent homeownership, and more emphasis on leisure time than on household chores.

It’s a viewpoint against which it is hard to argue. I think they’re both correct and perhaps from the future’s long view 2018s troubles will be recognized as aftershocks from The Big One of 1968.

There are, I’m sure, some lessons to be drawn from examining the 1960s.

One might be that the path to political victory MUST be via one of the two parties; that–because of the gendered nature of our political system–all third party efforts are made with as much vanity and nonsense as the so-called “non-binary genders” of transsexual activists. The Hard Left took over politics not with a Socialist Party, nor by routing Republicans, but by taking over the Democratic party.

Another more important is less a lesson than an observable truth: The so-called Right in America actually stands for nothing but Liberalism. It must stand for something. Larry Kummer writes in, The Left Pushes America down a slippery slope:

The Left drives America down a slippery slow to an unknown future. Radical social changes are coming ever faster, experiments powered by government power, done without our consent. We can still get off this path.

How? We might wonder. LK gives his prescription in his comments:

Hence awakening a desire for liberty and for self-government is necessary.

Yeah, that makes sense: What the Right needs to do is to be better Leftists. Then we will stop the Left…

Larry Kummer is not alone in his thinking. I was right there with him until I got smacked around by the writings of Zippy Catholic. I trust everyone sees the problem, but just in case: To be Right–and not Left–is to be overtly for authority; to take joy in being yoked together, each under the other–in, into, and of–a powerful structure. That is what has been capitulated.

Please leave your own suggested lessons in the comments.

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[1] HT: Nathan Rinne

(Edited to add the link Dalrock’s post, which I had intended from the start of this post.)

Taking Electrons Captive in Babylon

(CC: I meant to publish this tomorrow, but–what the heck–it’s out there now.)

A month ago Moose Norseman and I had a brief back and forth in the comments of his post It’s Less Difficult Than You Think on the merits of YouTube and other recent technological innovations. I wrote, “YouTube is the best education platform ever invented after the television. It can and is misused, but it really is phenomenal.” I think this is undeniable. Like all tools: It is good when used for good and bad when used for evil[1].

It would be good if we all had around us in the flesh Christian mentors on every topic from automotive repair to Zoroastrianism’s influence on early Christianity. But we don’t. By all means, I encourage everyone and myself to build those relationships, but in the meantime God has blessed us with an incredibly fertile landscape of powerful education technology. We Christians should husband it into gardens of Christ’s glory and put it and ourselves to service for others.

⁴ “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

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[1]Which is not the same thing as being neutral. Nothing is neutral. Everything evil is a corruption of something that should be good.

 

 

Sin Named Among Us, or, Sin Without Borders

Lexet writes:

Good point on authority. I have not found an answer as to why Christians should, in this age, file civil marriage certificates

Christians should file civil marriage certificates for many reasons. For one thing it is the law and we are bound as Christians to be obedient to civil authorities unless it is against the commandments of God. There is nothing against marriage licenses in the Bible.

Romans 13

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

Second, it is the God-appointed duty of the civil government to punish evil and approve good, and when done lawfully marriage is a good; about as good as anything on Earth gets. When a marriage is unlawful–such as in a case of bigamy or incest–then the practitioners are duly punished. The churches don’t do that. We may want churches to do that and we may even think they should, but they don’t. They cannot verify to us that Susan and Bob aren’t close relations. They don’t know whether Bob is already married. They cannot even verify that Susan is who she says she is. Nor do they want to.

Some will be tempted to bring up in the comments some failures of civil government such as so-called “homosexual marriage”, or the institution of no-fault divorce. Those are failures, to be sure. The trouble for would-be defenders of the churches is that these points of failure are not points of success for churches. They don’t claim authority over these abominations either. A pastor or priest might mouth something against these sins, but they let them in the doors all the same; even though we are instructed:

5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. ² And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

³ But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. ⁴ Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.⁵ For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. ⁶ Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. ⁷ Therefore do not become partners with them; ⁸ for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), ¹⁰ and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. ¹¹ Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ¹² For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. ¹³ But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, ¹⁴ for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

 

More Worthless than an Unrighteous Judge

BillyS writes:

No, modern society is undermining even the women it claims to support by letting them get out of the consequences of almost every one of their bad choices (when it can be shifted to a man instead).

You cannot hold anyone responsible for protecting another if you don’t give him control over that other person. Or technically you can, but the consequence is that you make it impossible for things to ever work.

Churches need to do their job better for sure, but it is working against a culture that promotes the opposite. That is missing from your post.

I agree that women are undermined by modern society and its culture. The first thing I want to point out though is that to talk about modern society and the culture is to talk about the same thing. But that thing isn’t a delineated and sentient forces separate from us. It’s just a shorthand way of talking about the aggregate of our individual choices.

What I did in the last paragraph of the post BillyS commented upon:

 When I think about our American society and how it treats women, I have to conclude that civil government is too permissive, but overall they still uphold their God-ordained mandate to protect (among others) women and their rights. It’s the churches which have failed to teach and discipline Christian men and women towards their Biblical responsibilities. It wasn’t required.

was separate the aggregate into two general groups of authority in America (civil authorities and church authorities), and make a judgment on my observations of them as the operate within their respective spheres.

We can know who is in authority by who we seek out. When a significant crime is committed against Christians we still call the police and follow trials. We still go to city hall to get building permits. We petition that our taxes be used to fix roads, fight fires, and all those things that are part of civic life. When push comes to shove, we still believe in the civil authorities of this world because they continue to demonstrate general competency and–importantly–the will to keep society going.

But increasingly Christians don’t go to church because we have observed that the church doesn’t practice authority over much other than pep talks, daycare, strenuous vacations, and busywork. We don’t go there to get rulings, wisdom, justice, or any of the fruits of authority.

What Isn’t Believed Isn’t Required

In the Christian Men’s Sphere we put a lot of emphasis on women’s agency, and that is a good thing, generally. We want them to make wise decisions.

At the same time, we must admit that The Author of the Bible did not intend for women to run their own lives unmediated; that the rest of us in Christian society–men and women alike–should just shrug at whatever choices a woman wants to make.

The Author of the NT repeatedly warns us that women are weak, weaker, prone to deception, and unpresentable in ways men are not. These truths don’t mean men are better. It just means men should be in charge, and that women should be under men’s protection.

When I think about our American society and how it treats women, I have to conclude that civil government is too permissive, but overall they still uphold their God-ordained mandate to protect (among others) women and their rights. It’s the churches which have failed to teach and discipline Christian men and women towards their Biblical responsibilities. It wasn’t required.

Enjoy the Chore, not the Decline

Scott is to close his fourth blog to reduce the the tech noise that disrupts his family:

Everyone in my house has their nose in some device, most of the time. And this is true despite all our efforts to “limit” the use of electronics. In and of itself, I suppose consuming whatever it is we are consuming is amoral or a wash, if you will. If we were all using these devices to read Shakespeare and other works of fine literature, it might be justifiable. But that’s not what we are doing.

I come home at night and as soon as I walk in the door–or as soon as I am not being bombarded by my kids–out comes my phone. To check my email. To check to see if anyone has liked or commented on my blog. To see if some argument I am involved in on someone else’s blog has taken any new turns.

I sit and read Bible stories to my kids from the Orthodox advent book we bought–and in between I am doing it again. Or I look up and Mychael is on Pinterest.

TTWHHAK will, as far as I know, stay right here, but his concerns are justified. What we’ve done is cut back on much of what drags us into the attention destroying machine that is the Internet. Months ago I canceled our Netflix subscription.

One of the best things I’ve done is to turn off all the notifications on my phone except for text messages and app updates. Now I check my email maybe once a day, and some days not at all. I also removed my Cane Caldo email account from my phone completely. That account only gets checked every couple days now.

Another thing that has helped in this regard is that I quit smoking back in August. My pattern was: Every hour, or thereabouts, to go outside, light a cigarette, and pull my phone out of my pocket. Once I stopped going outside then my phone use dropped-off dramatically. My old friends that I kept up with on Words with Friends have suffered. I play a word about once a week now.

Instead we read books, play boardgames, and listen to music. We also do a lot more chores (cooking, cleaning, fixing, etc.) together because when you’ve recovered all this time, then who cares if you get your chores done as fast as possible? You have to fill it with something. This is actually a matter of attitude–of the mind ruling the heart. I had to realize that the best thing to do is to decide to enjoy the chore because work is what the living get to do.

Thar Be Monsters in our Sea of Chivalry

Game/MTGOW and Feminism aren’t Christians’ problems except as they appeal to Christians because modern Christian practice is both anti-Christian AND a losing proposition. Our problem is that Christians don’t actually believe in the word of God. They don’t believe that–as whole beings–women are weaker than men…even though we all observe it every day. They don’t believe that it is good that God gave women fathers and husbands to rule them… even though we live in a society of liberated whores. They don’t believe that women are more easily deceived…even though marketing and scams are overwhelmingly aimed at susceptible women.

What Christians actually practice is chivalry because they believe that chivalry is “real” Christianity”. Chivalry is the water in which Feminism and Game/MTGOW swim; what is necessary for their existence. If we want Feminism and Game/MTGOW to go away, we have to destroy the cultural environment created by chivalry.

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Repurposed from this comment at Dalrock’s.

Why It’s Who You Know and Not What

What I want–what authoritarianism just is–is a government in which authority is delegated. That’s so straightforward that, in a way, it’s hard to understand what I mean so let’s compare it to our current system of government: bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy is the delegation of the tasks, rather than the delegation of authority itself. That’s why whenever I encounter bureaucracy it is something in my way and never what gets things done for me. That is why the bureaucracy was made. It’s design is to diffuse authority; to dehumanize power and mask responsibility.

Bureaucracy isn’t why you have to stand in line. That’s authority imposing its power whether anyone under that responsibility likes it or not, and even though we don’t think about it very much because of the mask and diffusion.

Bureaucracy is why, when you get to the front, the woman sitting there can’t solve your problem…unless she is a friend. Then she feels free to resort to her authority.

Things Head Coverings Discourage

Kimberly Santleben-Stiteler wanted to burn her wedding dress upon the finalization of her divorce, but then the patriarchy stepped in:

” ‘I wanted to remove all things from our marriage from our house,’ she told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. ‘Photos in the attic, ring in the safe (but probably going to sell it) and the dress I wanted to burn.’

It was her dad and brother who suggested upping the ante and adding explosives [CC: 20 lbs. of Tannerite] into the equation. […]

‘To me, the dress represented a lie. I wanted to have a divorce party to burn the dress,’ she said.”

Some facts from the article that stood out to me:

• Hyphenated name
• She’s 43, and was married for 14 years. So, married at 29, and then got tired of it when she felt the loss of her beauty.
• Wearing a vulgar shirt that says, “Hey Y’all, I’m Single AF”
• Has access to wealth and enough land to blow up a dress from 200 yards away
• Note the “tough” cowgirl aesthetic
• Since she divorced him, it was her lie which she celebrated.
• The ring, like all her valuable wedding tackle, is for sale.

This is what the values of rural Texas offer in the modern world, to our shame.

CoE VIb: We Must Start at the Head and Work Down

Before we talk about pants and what should cover the lower body, we must start at the head. I’ve written several posts on women wearing pants, and how that custom has weakened and blurred the distinctions between men and women in the Western World. I stand by most of what I wrote in those posts, yet we should start at the head–the command of our faith, and source of the same–which is the Word of God taught by the Apostles to us, the Church. We must start at the head, and work down.

If you asked me what needs to be done to begin to reintroduce good order to Western churches, my first change would be for us to be obedient to the Word of God from 1 Corinthians 11 on head coverings; and to require obedience to it upon pain of refusal to worship, or even excommunication. The individual church’s heads must teach head coverings for women but not for men, and the church body must obey. The family head must uphold it, and–supported by the church heads–the family body must be expected to obey. We must start at the head, and work down.

Those who are in submission, which is all of us, must look to our individual heads and see that it is suitably covered or uncovered so that our responsibilities are clear to ourselves and others. We must individually own those responsibilities, and take joy in them. What I mean is: I can’t expect someone to act as my subordinate if they will not accept that truth. If she won’t take the teachings on head coverings, then pants are a moot point because she will not accept the sign, symbol, and practice of submission. We must start at the head and work down.